No one has really figured out how to do succession planning really well, primarily because effective succession planning costs money. While many organizations would like free succession planning, there's no free lunch, and no effective succession planning program is free.

3. Talent Acquisition knows your talent end-to-end.

Talent Acquisition is the one group you have that cares about talent at every level, across your organization, and at every stage. Why? Every change, every termination, every retirement impact your talent acquisition team. You lose one person in Accounting, and Operations doesn't care. Talent Acquisition cares. Talent Acquisition cares because they have to help you find a replacement. They're the only team in your organization that has an end-to-end responsibility for talent.

4. Talent Acquisition isn't hindered by politics and relationships.

Talent Acquisition doesn't care that Mandy is the boss' favorite in sales. All they care about is whether or not Mandy is doing the job, or can do the next job. Because if Mary is better, your talent acquisition pros are going to want the most talented person in the position. They'll call out the B.S. Doing that is difficult for HR because they have the relationships with hiring managers, and need to preserve them. That means they usually play the game. Your talent acquisition folks don't have to play the game.

5. Talent Acquisition has the capacity and motivation to make succession planning work.

Your talent acquisition group has the capacity to take on succession planning because having this under their responsibility actually makes their job
easier. Having the full, end-to-end ownership of talent lets them run a more efficient process and shop. Bringing them in to fight fires is not efficient.

Succession planning fails because HR really wants nothing to do with it. It's a project for them. For talent acquisition pros, effective succession planning is what they do!

So now, who do you think should own succession planning?

Succession Planning Templates

Get the how-to for creating a winning succession plan and the tools to get it done!

Succession Planning Templates

By Tim Sackett

Tim is the President of HRU Technical Resources, engineering and IT staffing firm in Lansing, MI. He has 20 years of HR and recruiting background split evenly between corporate Fortune 500 gigs and third party staffing gigs. The best performance feedback Tim ever received was that he was "unfiltered and loose in the corners." Tim tells it like it is, which means sometimes he calls HR and Talent Pros out on the dumb stuff we do. Catch him weekly at www.timsackett.com and www.fistfuloftalent.com.